Should I sell my G5 quad?

[Armann]

I think you should lighten up.
I was just recommending something
since he is looking for something else
then PT.

I think you should see the light my friend,
PT isn't the only solution, I use it and it's
great but it's not THE solution for everything.

[CV]

I don't really understand what you're talking about.

but Everbody has different needs. Right now, PT LE isn't working for mine. I can"t wait a couple more months for the quad to be supported.


-CV

[CV]

I don't really understand what you're talking about.

but Everbody has different needs. Right now, PT LE isn't working for mine. I can"t wait a couple more months for the quad to be supported.


-CV

[editor]

Truth is, that the entire DAW thing takes a "feel" for the gear and a ton of experience with PT from version one... or at the least a two year school that educates you on the basics of recording/mixing and mastering. I run 2, G5 quads, with PT and logic, Logic for midi... as PT was always meant to be an audio editor. To compete, PT ended up being an outstanding audio editor with a midi interface sorta' stuck onto it. I use Logic to start with and then migrate the session to PT to finish out, almost always; unless its a no midi session. I have no problems with Pro Tools or Logic, with my Quad G5 and it is ripping fast. Thing is, I also have 20 years experience in this game. I almost sold my Quads too, now you couldn't ripp them from my hands. They work well for me, a crash is rare and its very fast. For the guy going out on his first DAW limb, I would not suggest the latest, bleeding edge tools. For the journeyman Daw user who has a lot of experience with all of the glitches PT has and knows the answers by instinct, I say go for it. It takes a "sixth sense" if you will, to make all this stuff work... some guys have it, and others who work on these units day in and day out will develop it. I could never get the voice recognition software ViaVoice to work, until I got my G5 quad. Now it types faster than I can talk with very few if any mistakes. In fact I am posting this message, by speaking into a microphone and watching text appear on the screen. The Quad was the first machine that could ever handle this kind of load. I also run logic and pro tools with voice commands with nary a glitch. And then I have friends who can't get Microsoft word to work properly with the same set up. it really boils down to, how much time are you willing to invest to learn how, to make your gear work for you and not vice versa. In a nutshell, I believe that this quad machine will serve me well for many years to come. The Intel leap, is a much bigger step, then the leap from dual, to quad processors. Just my two cents' worth ... I could be wrong, your mileage may vary, and so on and so forth. Good luck to all.


Regards

e

[CV]

E

thanks for the comments. Yes, you need to know how to get your system to run well. However, there's only so much you can do with a program that is not currently written/ supported properly.
Digidesign has claimed themselves that the quad is not supported and 7.x RTAS does not really work at low buffer settings.

People who bought the quad, willingly took on this risk.

The point of this thread is to check in with other music composers using a quad and PT LE 7. If you're using any VI's and are recording mixing at the same time (buffer 128 samples,) I'd love to hear your system is running great.

I could pull up kontakt 2 and BDF lite and my system can hardly run with the cpu spikes...


cheers,
CV

[Mt.Everest]

Truth is, that the entire DAW thing takes a "feel" for the gear and a ton of experience with PT from version one... or at the least a two year school that educates you on the basics of recording/mixing and mastering. I run 2, G5 quads, with PT and logic, Logic for midi... as PT was always meant to be an audio editor. To compete, PT ended up being an outstanding audio editor with a midi interface sorta' stuck onto it. I use Logic to start with and then migrate the session to PT to finish out, almost always; unless its a no midi session. I have no problems with Pro Tools or Logic, with my Quad G5 and it is ripping fast. Thing is, I also have 20 years experience in this game. I almost sold my Quads too, now you couldn't ripp them from my hands. They work well for me, a crash is rare and its very fast. For the guy going out on his first DAW limb, I would not suggest the latest, bleeding edge tools. For the journeyman Daw user who has a lot of experience with all of the glitches PT has and knows the answers by instinct, I say go for it. It takes a "sixth sense" if you will, to make all this stuff work... some guys have it, and others who work on these units day in and day out will develop it. I could never get the voice recognition software ViaVoice to work, until I got my G5 quad. Now it types faster than I can talk with very few if any mistakes. In fact I am posting this message, by speaking into a microphone and watching text appear on the screen. The Quad was the first machine that could ever handle this kind of load. I also run logic and pro tools with voice commands with nary a glitch. And then I have friends who can't get Microsoft word to work properly with the same set up. it really boils down to, how much time are you willing to invest to learn how, to make your gear work for you and not vice versa. In a nutshell, I believe that this quad machine will serve me well for many years to come. The Intel leap, is a much bigger step, then the leap from dual, to quad processors. Just my two cents' worth ... I could be wrong, your mileage may vary, and so on and so forth. Good luck to all.


Regards

e

Sixth Sense? " Feel " for your DAW? " Go to school? " ?!?

Sorry, but this post is condescendning to the many pro-level, highly experienced users who are faced with the unreliable integration of 3rd party software with PT LE, and PT TDM as well for that matter. Many of us use PT LE as our home/composing setup, aside from TDM rigs at the studio. We do this for easy compatibilty between rigs. I've been setting up and tweaking DAW rigs since the early days of PTs and Ive seen it all. Your post suggest that LE users by default are kids who just picked up the latest and greatest from Guitar Center, and this is simply not true. Many of us are professionals looking for a stable, modern rig, that can reliably run the potentially amazing software out there, such as Ivory.

Sure, your Quad G5 may run fine if you are using the 'as-is' Digidesign software, but as soon as you throw in RTAS soft-samplers and synths like Ivory, Kontakt, BFD, Rewire, etc etc, PTs falls apart. Even on SUPPORTED computers. Buffer errors, CPU spikes, and general instability. I can't point fingers because its hard to tell who is at fault, but regardless of your DAW savvy, PT is just not working well with 3rd party apps.

Its a conflict, cuz alot of us love the PT platform and want to continue to use it, but for whatever reason, non-Digidesign RTAS instruments do not run happy with Protools.

Ive been a DAW nerd for many years, and no matter how much of a ' feel ' you have for your DAW or your level of expertise, its just a fact that things are not running well in PT (LE & TDM) if you are trying to use any add on software that is essential these days for a productive composing/recording/mixing setup.

MT

[editor]

About all I could add is that, my quads started working a whole lot better, when I added 16 gigs of ram to them. I use a ton of EXS inst.'s in Logic and all the PT RTAS I can stand no problems. Before the ram, the machines were almost crippled I down loaded the digi PT quad patch for PT 7 and mine works fine. I might add that I have never had any real big luck with Kontact and find all the NI ware to be a bit suspect. I did do a slight bit of code editing on PT 7 to get it to run better on the quads. I would read all the NI manuals and make sure, that all sample rates agree if I were you. As everybody is trying to set their own SR standards these days. Also some Macs are just lemons and others do things the manual says they won't go figure. Good luck.

Regards

e

[editor]

[/QUOTE]

Sixth Sense? " Feel " for your DAW? " Go to school? " ?!?

Sorry, but this post is condescendning to the many pro-level, highly experienced users who are faced with the unreliable integration of 3rd party software with PT LE, and PT TDM as well for that matter. Many of us use PT LE as our home/composing setup, aside from TDM rigs at the studio. We do this for easy compatibilty between rigs. I've been setting up and tweaking DAW rigs since the early days of PTs and Ive seen it all. Your post suggest that LE users by default are kids who just picked up the latest and greatest from Guitar Center, and this is simply not true. Many of us are professionals looking for a stable, modern rig, that can reliably run the potentially amazing software out there, such as Ivory.

Sure, your Quad G5 may run fine if you are using the 'as-is' Digidesign software, but as soon as you throw in RTAS soft-samplers and synths like Ivory, Kontakt, BFD, Rewire, etc etc, PTs falls apart. Even on SUPPORTED computers. Buffer errors, CPU spikes, and general instability. I can't point fingers because its hard to tell who is at fault, but regardless of your DAW savvy, PT is just not working well with 3rd party apps.

Its a conflict, cuz alot of us love the PT platform and want to continue to use it, but for whatever reason, non-Digidesign RTAS instruments do not run happy with Protools.

Ive been a DAW nerd for many years, and no matter how much of a ' feel ' you have for your DAW or your level of expertise, its just a fact that things are not running well in PT (LE & TDM) if you are trying to use any add on software that is essential these days for a productive composing/recording/mixing setup.

MT

[/QUOTE]

My first post on the DUC in a year or more, and already embroiled in controversy... First of all I am posting to the pro tools le user board, am I not? I think your last paragraph summed it up well. Part of having a " feel" for your D.A.W. is knowing what software to stay away from. If it says its unsupported, try it a few times, (get lucky) and or then wait for an update. As far as condescending to anyone, let's face it, the very LE nomenclature suggests an entry level user. Out of the thousands of le systems that have been sold and are in use today, its a fact, that a very small percentage of end users are "seasoned professionals"... although many may think so. One unfortunate byproduct of the pro tools revolution, is that it has clouded the audio recording market with users who have professional gear, yet are not audio professionals. Many years ago if an engineer had a digital editing system, by sheer Association there was no doubt you were dealing with a "seasoned professional".... unfortunately this is no longer true. its a double edged sword, because I'm glad so many new enthusiasts have access to such wonderful gear; yet I hackle at the idea, that simply owning the gear somehow automatically makes a person a " seasoned professional." in fact in the entire United States there are not that many seasoned professionals, I mean really how many do you think there are 1000, 5000, 10,000 on the outside? pro tools le, exists for one purpose, and one purpose only; to draw users into buying pro tools H D, that's it and that's all. if pro tools le functioned perfectly and did everything exactly as we wanted it to... there would be no need for pro tools H D. I'm amazed that it works at all. This has been a long-running theme on the DUC ... why doesn't pro tools le offer everything, that pro tools H D offers? well the subject has grown quite thin; and its one of the reasons I quit posting here, it's beating a dead horse. even though I own pro tools H D, I also own pro tools le Systems, why? Because I've always thought, that it would be neat to have low cost pro tools systems that can compete with the higher dollar offerings. I also enjoy the challenge of finding worked arounds in pro tools le, that make it competitive with pro tools H D.

It's the same reason as a pilot, I purchase and build kit planes. I feel like I have accomplished something when I build an airplane from a relatively inexpensive kit, that can do the same things that are offered in million dollar, polished and delivered complete aircraft. In the field of aviation, there is a standing rule, that a pilot must do a complete and thorough mechanical walk around of his aircraft, before each and every use. I have known many pilots, over the years who thought they had that something extra, that "sixth sense" if you will ... after going down because of a rookie mistake they came to realize that they weren't quite as skillful as they once thought. ... and that having a thorough mechanical knowledge of the aircraft, was every bit as important as knowing how to operate it. W/O getting too far off into the blue, let me just say there are very few pro tools operators, whose passenger seat I would trust with my life. When I'm in the air with a pilot and something goes wrong, I don't want to hear a bunch of excuses of how a company didn't support a certain piece of gear anyhow, I want to see someone who knows how to compensate immediately. pro tools le, is what it is... we all knew that when we purchased it. It would be great if everything was compatible with everything. This simply isn't the way life works, I am all about getting the most out of what I have to work with at the time. Knowing the platform has become a condition of the art form... In addition, quite frankly I have grown tired of the people who purchased an m-box, last week, and are suddenly, experts in the area of digital audio... it's become a cliche these days and a sad one at best. Just a sign of the times!

Regards

e

[Hype]

Sorry, but this post is condescendning to the many pro-level, highly experienced users who are faced with the unreliable integration of 3rd party software with PT LE ........MT

Thank you Mt.Everest!

and to "editor"....one word: Hubris!

[CV]

Editor:

specifically what code did you change is OS X for the quad to function better.

Also, are we to believe you spent in the sum of $20,000 (if apple RAM) to supply two quads with 16 gigs of RAM !?!!?

this is ridiculous.

Please, this thread is for useful and practical info regarding PT 7 and the quad. All practical posts on users experience with the quad and other programs like logic and DP would be most helpful.

the plug-ins that stop my system short are BFD ( HORRIBLE performance !!!) Kontakt 2, east west platinum orchastral series (kompakt), Colossus, and all of the izotope plug-ins. Amplitube LE is very buggy as well.

RTAS at low buffer settings is crippled at best..


Ivory works like a dream. analog channel, and altiverb 5 are good. Live 4 for rewire works well too

-CV